For her second Vogue cover, Katy Perry ushers in a new chapter of her life. Perry, the once bubblegum pop artist with a quirky, colorful shoe line recently launched, dons haute couture along the lines of Rei Kawakubo's geometric creations (she sports a Comme Des Garcons avant garde red dress on the May cover).

"Fashion is just a language," Perry says in her Vogue interview. "It's storytelling. I am so encouraged by the big morph in fashion that's happening at the moment. Everybody is shape-shifting, changing, adapting."

Apart from her radical shifts in perspectives - both in fashion with her current androgynous style and in politics with her "purposeful pop" and Democratic National Convention performance - Perry uses the Vogue feature to speak about her conservative evangelist upbringing and clumsy 20s trying to make it as a musician in L.A.

"I wouldn't give anything to go back to my 20s; I'm so much more grounded," the star says in her cover feature. "And I've learned a lot of lessons - patience, the art of saying no, that everything doesn't have to end in marriage. That your education can start now."